SHANE New Zealand is
growing slowly. Statistics New Zealand have released their
first population projection since 2009. With nearly 4.5
million people living here now, the projections show slow
growth in coming years – 5 million in the mid-2020s, 6
million around 2060. But it’s the make-up of that
population that’s most interesting. By the late 2020s, 1
million New Zealanders – that’s one in five – will be
over 65, and there’ll be more of them than there are
children under 15. And as our fertility rates decline, so
the proportion of immigrants rises. To help explain what
all this might mean, here’s Jessica Mutch with Massey
University professor Paul Spoonley.

JESSICA Professor Paul
Spoonley, thank you very much for joining us this morning.
I want to touch on that 5 million figure – that’s what
New Zealand’s population is going to be in 2020. What
will New Zealand look like with that kind of population?

PROF PAUL SPOONLEY – Massey
University Well, we’ll
be much older, but we’ll also have a much higher
proportion of immigrants, and so the things that stand out
are the ageing population and the fact that our growth is
going to have to come from overseas.

JESSICA Are we growing as
fast as we should?

PAUL
No, we’re not, but then
all countries in the Western world are in decline, and we
are what’s called premature ageing. So not only are we
getting a lot more older people – that’s in size – but
as a proportion of the population they’re growing because,
of course, we’re seeing quite a few young people leave the
country.

JESSICA
Let’s talk a little bit about that population
spread. Why are so many people moving to Auckland?

PAUL Well,
Auckland – there’s an agglomeration effect, so the
bigger Auckland becomes, there more attractive it becomes.
It becomes more attractive economically, but it also becomes
more attractive as a place to live. And so we’re seeing
the sort of perimeters of New Zealand, the regions,
beginning to flat-line, so they’re not growing, and
we’re now beginning to see the first of regions beginning
to decline.

JESSICA How is Auckland
growing compared with the rest of the world in terms of a
city?

PAUL
Well, just to talk about New Zealand for a minute
– natural growth, that’s the births over deaths, is
still the most important factor in New Zealand’s growth.
But in Auckland, our most important factor is immigration.
So we are one of the major destination cities around the
world, and you can see that in the make-up of Auckland –
the number of people who have been born overseas.

JESSICA Let’s talk about
that immigration mix, particularly in a place like
Auckland. 40% of the population is born overseas. What
is that immigration growth looking like long term?

PAUL Well, the
first thing is that 40% puts us right at the top. I mean,
there aren’t many cities around the world that have 40% of
their population born overseas. I mean, Toronto,
Vancouver, but really Auckland’s right up the top there.
Increasingly, if you look at the figures for the last year,
we still attract people out of Britain, but we’re also
seeing very large numbers coming out of India, and the
growing population is the Filipino population. So we’re
what’s called a super-diverse city, so we—
immigration’s very important to the city’s growth, but
it’s the diversity of that immigration population that’s
really important, and it marks Auckland out. I mean,
people tend to think of Los Angeles or London. In fact,
Auckland’s more diverse than those cities.

JESSICA How much of a
multicultural city are we going to have here in Auckland in
20, 30, 40 years’ time?

PAUL
Well, huge because the
people that are ageing tend to be Pakeha. If you look at
New Zealand’s population, 30% of those under 15 are either
Maori or Pacific Islander, but the growth population by far
is the Asian population. They are growing much more
rapidly. And my projections are that in 2016, which is
when we would have had a census and I assume we will do, a
quarter of Auckland’s population will be Asian and a
quarter will be Maori and Pasifika.

JESSICA
That—

PAUL
That’s a huge change.

JESSICA That
multicultural diversity – are we dealing with that well?

PAUL Yes,
I think we are. I mean, if you compare us with
Australia— I mean, one of the peculiar things is that
Australia used to be our model, but post-John Howard,
Australia’s tended to take a very hard line on both
immigrants and what they call boat people – you know, the
camps, the attitudes. And if you look at the public
opinion polling, New Zealand is now much more— New
Zealanders are much more now in favour of immigrants than
Australians. And so we’re beginning to look much more
like Canada in terms of the mix but also the attitude. We
haven’t had a Cronulla. We haven’t had rioting on our
streets because of immigrants or between particular
communities.

JESSICA
That UMR Asia-New Zealand research that you talk
about shows that we are becoming more accepting of
immigrants, except the Maori population. Why is that?

PAUL
Well, I think Maori see immigrants as a threat in
several ways. We’ve invested a lot in biculturalism, so
what’s local multiculturalism going to look like? Both
Canada and Australia adopted official multicultural policies
in the 1970s. We don’t have a multicultural policy. We
do things to respect and celebrate multiculturalism, but we
don’t have a policy. We don’t have a language
policy. And I also think there is competition economically
between Maori and the new immigrants. The new immigrants
are typically skilled, so are they taking from Maori? I
think that’s where the concern comes from.

JESSICA
Just finally, let’s touch on this ageing
population that you talked about earlier. In 20 years’
time, 1.2 million people will be over the age of 65. What
does that mean for New Zealand going forward?

PAUL Well,
firstly, it’s a doubling. So we’re at 600,000, so
we’re seeing the over-65 double. I think the second
thing which is really concerning is what’s called the
dependency ratio, which is the ratio between those who are
in the workforce and those who are dependent on the state in
some way. And we’re seeing that decline. There’s a
big bite out of the younger New Zealand age groups because
they’re going. I mean, 150,000 New Zealanders have left
this country since the start of the economic recession, and
that’s a huge concern. So we need people to stay here,
and we need people to be working here to support that
dependency ratio.

JESSICA
And we’re going to have to leave it there.
We’ve run out of time. Thank you very much for your time
this morning, Professor Paul Spoonley.

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